Greek National Election Results via SMS
Written on Wednesday, September 30, 2009
I'm particularly excited about today's post, because it is from Greece -- my home country -- and I don't get many mobile marketing stories from there.
I just found out that the election results from this weekend's national elections will also be sent via SMS from the voting stations back to HQ (Ministry of Internal Affairs).
This is still a pilot program aiming to reduce times before the final results are announced, and was also applied (at a smaller scale) in the Euro elections back in June.
This time, one in five (20%) of the voting stations will use 'special mobile phones' (I guess this means SIM cards with predefined mobile numbers) to send the results, encrypted, to a database in the Greek Ministry of Internal Affairs, where they will be summed up with the results from the rest of the voting stations.
The aim is to fully adopt the system in the next elections, and use it for all voting stations, if it all goes well of course, and we don't end up waiting to find out who's our next prime minister at 5:00 am with a half-empty cup of coffee and an empty packet of cigarettes..(Disclaimer: I don't smoke, but, believe me, that's the typical image of your average greek)
The judicial representatives will personally pick up sealed packages from the City Hall, containing the mobile phones, which will have to be returned, after the election, along with the rest of the electorial material. This way there can be no tampering with the devices, in order to ensure the integrity of the election results.
I know other countries have already adopted much more technologically advanced approaches, not only for transmitting the election results, but -- more importantly -- for casting your vote. Ok, we're not quite there yet --in fact, far from it-- but, hey, it's a start...
Posted in
mobile services,
sms,
sms marketing
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This is not mobile-marketing related news, it is more a mobile-phone/mobile voting/sms thing.
It it interesting anyway, i prefer having the traditional human factor in the voting process and use technology just to send the results, rather than having the whole voting process implemented with technology.
The voting machines used in other countries and specially the USA, have proven to be a good and easy way to falsify the results, so i am very skeptical about them.
Yeah it's an interesting point you bring up, but the way I see it, there are already a number of ways to mess with election results, all by humans.. So, whether it's easier or not to do the same with the voting system, depends on whether you think it's easier to turn the people involved in the election process, or the system itself.
In either case, the principle is the same. If the process (human or machine-operated) is open for inspection and transparent, you can be (almost) certain it will be fair.